Leadership Development and the POWER of Silence
One of the most vital aspects of leadership training is when and how to use silence. Sometimes taking a deep breath and keeping you mouth shut is the most inventive way to get others to be accountable and get work moving to new heights.
EXAMPLE: Someone comes into your office to complain about a co-worker. They sit down and begin to say how “awful” the situation is, how they are being discounted, what a “hostile workplace“ this has become. (Did you ever notice that this claim is usually made by the most ineffective employees?) What should YOU do? Listen for a short minute (that means less than 60 seconds) and then stop the noise.
Ask the person to tell you three things they have done to make the situation better?
AND THEN BE SILENT. DO NOT SAY ANOTHER WORD.
SILENCE is a powerful motivator for accountability. The other individual has to come up with something and will either grow and learn by having to look at him or herself in the emotional mirror you have just provided with your silence or they will leave. Either way you have won an important battle against negativity with your silence.
The other side of the coin is he or she who remains silent is guilty too.
There are other times that silence is toxic. Just look at the lesson that seems to never be learned in Germany, that place of remembered hatred and dissention and the start of World War II.
Imagine 70 years later, swastikas still being splattered on public property by still viable neo-Nazi groups. Then look at the courage of one woman who will not stay silent. She spends her retirement days cleaning the city of Berlin from the hate of the few that have not ever truly gone away.
She is an example of the power to speak out and not stay in her cocoon. In the book “Don’t Bring It to Work”, there are numerous stories of the importance of breaking the pattern of silence, when fear says it is not safe. In this case, to remain silent is to be guilty too!
Silence is a powerful tool, learn to use it wisely as you grow to be a leader at any level.
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